Healthcare Workers' Views on Approaches to Discussing Alternative Treatment Options in Multidisciplinary Cancer Care

Area of Science:

• Oncology
• Healthcare Management
• Medical Ethics

Background:

• Patients with life-threatening illnesses often receive incomplete information on curative treatment options.
• Treatment discussions may be limited by an oncologist's scope of practice, potentially excluding equally effective alternatives.
• This can impact patient autonomy and treatment choice.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate healthcare workers' perceptions of discussing curative treatment options.
• To compare the acceptability of different approaches to presenting treatment choices to patients.
• To assess views on a multidisciplinary approach versus a single-provider discussion.

Main Methods:

• An electronic survey was distributed to healthcare professionals at a cancer center.
• Respondents evaluated four scenarios of presenting treatment options using Likert scales.
• Scenarios varied in how information about two equally effective procedures (A and B) was presented by physicians.

Main Results:

• A total of 266 responses were collected with a 16% response rate.
• Presenting only one option (Approach #1) received a low acceptability score (1.58).
• Routinely referring patients to specialists for each procedure (Approach #4) received the highest score (4.75), indicating strong preference.

Conclusions:

• Healthcare workers strongly favor a balanced, multidisciplinary approach to discussing cancer treatment options.
• This approach enhances the quality of healthcare delivery and the patient experience.
• Transparency and comprehensive information sharing are crucial for patient-centered care.